Free Stories Toto Told Me (Valancourt Classics) by Barón Corvo, Frederick Rolfe

window to see a naked boy running about in the orchard or in the churchyard, he would say to himself that it was just a poor soul escaping from purgatory, and then, having repeated a De Profundis, he would go back to his bed. So just as I was creeping across the yard with the warm rain pouring in torrents over my body, there came this banging on the door of my house, and I skipped behind a tree and waited. Then my father opened the window of his room upstairs, demanding what was the matter, and the voice of the servant of the respectable man, replied that la Signora Pucci had suddenly been taken very ill, and that if my mother was a Christian woman she would come to her assistance. This servant spoke with a very thick voice; and as I did not think I was going to be amused if I stayed behind my tree, I ran away and enjoyed myself enough with the peaches belonging to these Cappuccini. When I came home I dried myself with a cloth, took my shirt from under the seat in the porch, and went to bed again. And in the morning when I awoke there was no one to give us our breakfast; for my father was gone to his work, and my mother to the assistance of the wife of the respectable man; so I was thankful enough that I had made so many good meals during the night. All that day, and all the next night, and the day after, was my mother away from her home; and I need not tell you that I began to think that something very strange was happening, of which I ought to know; so I waited here, and I waited there, and I put a question of one kind to this, and a question of another kind to that, and during the night, after my father had seen me go to bed, I got up again, left my shirt in the porch as before, not because it was raining now, but because I liked it, as well as for the other reason, and I wandered about quite naked and happy and free” (here he tossed his arms and wriggled all over in an indescribable manner), “dodging behind trees and bushes, from my father’s house to the house of the respectable man, and to the churchyard of the convent of the Cappuccini; and during that night I saw many curious things; and these, with the answers which were given to the questions I had been asking, and other odds and ends, which I either knew, or had seen with my eyes, made me able to know exactly what this mystery was.

      “Now I ought to have told you this, that a week before, a priest from the Jesuit college of which I have already spoken had been buried in the convent churchyard; also he was the confessor of the wife of the respectable man, and a priest whom she held in the very greatest honour, and he was called Padre Guilhelmo Siretto. He was a saint indeed whom everybody venerated, for the Signor Iddio had made him live sixty-seven years in order that he might add to the many good deeds which in his long life he had done. I should like you to remember this, because now I must go to another part of the story.
      After the servant of the respectable man had told my father that her mistress was ill, my mother arose from her bed and went at once to the house of the sick person. Arrived there, she found la Signora Pucci fallen upon the floor in great pain; and, being a woman herself, she knew with one stroke of her eye what was the matter.
      Now the servant of the respectable man, who had accompanied my mother, was drunk, and so useless. Therefore my mother, who is the best of all women living, made la Signora Pucci as comfortable as she could at that time, went into the stable, put the horse into the cart, and, having driven for three miles to the nearest town, brought a doctor back with her as the day was breaking.
      The sick woman was put to bed, and the doctor gave my mother directions as to what was to be done during his absence: for he said he must go home now to finish his night’s rest, and in the morning he had his patients to see, but in the afternoon he would come again, and that then, perhaps, something would happen. But my